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IGROEniDiGROlilfEe!- 



THE FIRST. AN INFERIOR RACE-THE LATTER, ITS NORMAL CONDITION, 



BY J. H. VAN EYRIE, ]\r. D. 



INTRODUCTORY NUMBER: 



CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION ON THE SUBJECT. 



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Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1333, 

By J. H. Van Evrie, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Columbia. 




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^ JOHiV D. TOY, PRINTER, BALTIMORE. 



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LETTERS TO THE AUTHOR. 



From Hon. Jejferson Davisj Secretary of War. 

Washington, 3d June, 1853. 
1)r. Van Enrie: 

Dear Sir, — I liave read the enclosed pages wilh great interest, and not 
as a Southern man merely, but as an American,! thank you for your able and 
manly exposure of a fallacy which more than any or all other causes has disturbed 
the tranquility of our people and endangered the perpetuity of our constitutional 
union. Witli high regard I am your obedient servant, 

Jeffe'n Davis. 

From Professor De Bow, Sup. U. S. Census. 

Washington June 16, 1853. 
Dear Sir, — I agree in the principles which you assume in the conduct of the 
slavery argument, in the introductory chapter of your work. They are new and 
striking and considering the great and overruling importance of the question and the 
ability wilh which they are j)ressed must excite wide interest and attention. 

Your obedient servant, 
Dr. J. H. Van Evrie. I. D. B. De Bow. 

From Hon. ]). S. Dickinson^ Ex U. S. Senator. 

BtNGHAMTON, N. Y. Jult/ 28, 18.53. 

Ml/ Dear Sir, — I have perused witii great interest and satisfaction your introduc- 
tory chapter upon "Negroes and Negro Slaveiy" and rejoice in believing that a 
subject which has been so little understood is finally abjut to receive the exposition 
which the best interests of society demands. This specimen of your work gives 
evidence of deep ethnological research and consideration, and the bold and masterly 
hand with which you strip olf the disguises furnished by the spurious philanthrophist 
and true demagogue, renders it ten fold more acceptable and attractive. Such a 
work was demanded by all the friends of lational progress, for the influence it must 
exert in elevating the Caucasian race .to a proper conception of their mission, and 
turning them from the contemplation of casting down barriers erected by the 
Almighty. I am, with high regard, yours truly. 

Dr. J. H. Van Evrie. D. S. Dickinson. 

From JVew York JVational Democrat, 

Dr. Van Evrie, of Washington, has in press a work of four hundred pages, enti- 
tled " Negroes and Negro Slavery," the introductory chapter of which we have 
received, in a neat pamphlet. This introduction discusses, wilh great ability and 
jiower, the causes of the popular delusion on the subject of slavery. Physiology 
and history are summoned as witnesses to prove the natural inferiority of the negro 
race, and to prove that it is incapable of existing under circumstances of entire 
i-quality with the Caucasian race. The learned author sho\\s conclusively that the 
condition of the negro in our Southern States is much more natuial than the condi- 
tion of the woiking class of England, or of all Europe. We have been so much 
pleased wilh the lollowing comparison between the English Nobleman and the 
Southern Planter, that we give it enVire in our editorial columns : 



rt PllEFACE. 






If some one ignorant of the real nature of epilepsy slioultl, 
on witnessing a case, go away and write a book describing the 
contortions of the muscles, foaming at the mouth, distortions of 
features, &c. that ordinarily attend a paroxysm of that complaint, 
those who might read it and were as ignorant of the disease, as 
the writer himself, would doubtless imagine it a condition of ex- 
treme suffering, when in reality, there is none whatever, for the 
simple reason that the patient is wholly unconscious: but such a 
book would as truly describe the real condition of the epileptic 
as the books attacking American Slavery, describe the real condi- 
tion of the slave. And if some one were to reply to it, ad- 
mitting that there was suffering in epilepsy^ but that it was less, 
or of a different character from that assumed in such book, it 
would go just as far in explaining the real condition of the epi- 
leptic patient as the books written in defence of Southern Slavery 
do in explaining the real condition of the slave. 

This may be still further illustrated by a certain famous or ia- 
famous negro novel recently written to describe Southern Society. 
The writer represents her negro characters as white people, and 
their masters as Devils, or as extra human; one just as true 
to nature and fact as the other, for certain it is, if there are beings 
in our times capable of enslaving people like ourselves, such 
beings must be extra human. 

Southern writers, however, indignant at these false representa- 
tions of Southern Society, attempt replies to this book; but 
admitting the theory of the writer that the negro is a black white 
man, or that Southern Slaves are people like ourselves, are, 
1 



of course, unable to point out its falsehoods to the rest of the 
Avoilil. Thus, the illusion, misconception, or false perception of 
fact goes on; and as those ignorant of epilepsy, pity the imaginary 
sufferings of the patients, so the North ignorant of the real nature 
of the negro, continues to pity the imaginary sufferings of the 
slave; while the South knoivs, from actual experience, that not only 
is there entire absence of suffering, but that this condition assures 
to the race a greater measure of happiness than ever before known 
in its history. We are now in the middle of the nineteenth 
century, and as a purely scientific question, aside even from the 
momentous consequences wrapped up in it, it is time that the 
popular fallacy in regard to the negro w^as exploded. 

Hitherto the specific character of the negro has not been 
investigated; indeed the whole question of the human races is 
yet to be explored. 

To be sure, Buffon, Blumenback, Summering, the Cuviers, 
Lawrence, Pritchard, Agassiz, Hamilton Smith and others, have 
professed to investigate the subject; but their researches, however 
accurate or valuable, have been limited to externals, or to mere 
zoological data; while the physiological and psycological facts, 
which can alone determine the real character of the several races, 
and their true relations to each other, have not been enquired into. 

The author of this publication has devoted several years to 
this enquiry, especially to that portion of the general subject, 
embracing the specific character of the negro, and the natural 
relations of whites and negroes; the results of w^hich he is now 
prepared to lay before the public. 

Stripping off the skin of the negro, he proposes to demonstrate 
to the senses, as well as the reason, that he is not a black white 
man, or a man merely with a black skin, but a different and 
INFERIOR SPECIES OF MAN ; — that this difference is radical, and 
total, and relatively, as great in the primordial arrangement of ele- 
mentary particles, or the single globule of blood, as in the color of 
the skin, or the grosser facts, palpable to the senses; — that it is 
original, invariable, and indestructible, as long as the pres- 
ent order of creation itself lasts ; — that the physical structure of 
the race is necessarily and perpetually linked with corresponding 
faculties, capabilities, wants, necessities, in short, with a specific 



nature, and is thus designed by the Almighty Creator for corres- 
ponding purposes, or a social position harmonizing with those 
wants, etc. ; — that therefore all the charges against the social 
system of the South, being based on false assumptions, are them- 
selves necessarily false; — that so-called slavery is neither a 
"wrong" nor an "evil," nor is its extension dangerous, but 
that it is a normal condition, a natural relation, based upon the 
" higher law," in harmony with the order, progress, and general 
well-being of the superior one, and absolutely essential to the 
very existence of the inferior race. 

In the discussion of this subject, of course no issue is made 
w4th Abolitionism, or with abolitionists per se. They but em- 
brace notions common throughout the North, and while made up 
of materials not likely to disturb the peace or order of society, 
unknown to themselves perform an important public service; 
for their very efforts \o pradicaUze what are generally admitted to 
be abstract truths, serve only to show that these abstractions are 
themselves falsehoods. 

It was designed to publish in book form, but by the advice of 
friends the present mode has been adopted as the best and readi- 
est means of getting the results of these investigations before 
the public. The present number, though giving a brief summary 
of all the points discussed, is merely preliminary, and will be 
followed by another, about the first of January, detailing the 
facts on which present assumptions are based. After that a 
number will be issued monthly, until the whole vs^ork, embracing 
some 400 pages octavo, is completed. 

In conclusion, the writer begs to say to the reader, that he puts 
forward no claims to mere scholarship or fine writing; that in the 
exposition, the test and demonstration of facts of transcendent 
importance, not only to twenty millions of white men and the 
cause of civilization on this continent, but to the well-being, 
the very existence of the inferior race in our midst, he is 
anxious only to be understood; while indiflferent„ perhaps even 
careless, as regards style or mere forms of expression. But how- 
ever defective in a literary point of view, or however he may fail 
from want of ability to impress these facts, and the conclusions 
that legitimately belong to them, upon the minds of others, or 



whatever resistance ignorance, superstition, popular credulity, or 
the mental habitudes of classes of men may oppose to their recep- 
tion, he cannot doubt the final result,— for they are truths 
eternal and indestructible as time itself ;— and moreover, it is the 
interest of every patriotic citizen and true American, North and 
South, to accept them. 



NEGROES AND NEGRO "SLAVERY." 

THE FIRST, AN INFERIOR RACE— THE LATTER, ITS NORMAL CONDITION. 



INTRODUCTORY CIIAPTEE. 

CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION ON THE SUBJECT. 

General ignorance of organization — Ahsurd notions of equality or "equal 
rights" — Mistaking the permanent condition of inferior for primitive or 
transition stages of superior Races — Ignorance of physiological law of inter- 
union; results of the law, Jlmerican Democracy — Departures or evasions, 
European Royalism — Violations, JMulattoism or Hybridism — Confounding 
natural imth artificial distinctions or the laws of nature ivilh tlie results of 
social and governmental contrivances — Consequences — Conclusion. 

The origin of mankind, their descent from a single pair, (Adam and Eve,) 
thus constituting a single race or species; or whether in common with the 
animals and plants that surround them, they were (originally) created in 
several localities or centres of existence; and therefore are made up of several 
distinct species; though long a question of interest to a few scientific in- 
quirers, has only quite recently been of general interest to mankind at large. 

It suited the political interests of European governments to confound the 
distinctions of classes with those of nature — the results of social or political 
contrivances with the works of the Creator ; while the general belief or the 
general understanding of the Mosaic account of Creation, together with the 
almost universal ignorance prevailing on this subject, has been sufficient to 
determine the question theoretically in favor of the common origin, and there- 
fore the common equality, of all mankind, however widely separated in fact, 
or however contradictory to experience and common sense. Thus it has only 
been, within a few years past, that the accumulation of scientific facts have 
become so overwhelming, and their reconciliation with the single-pair theory 
so utterly impossible, that naturalists have been compelled to dissent from it 
altogether, and to follow the facts of science, with the confident assurance, 
however, that that which is really true is best, and should be known. Among 
those whose love of truth is sufficient to overcome preconceived opinion, is 



an eminent Boston professor; but even this gentleman, with all his learning, 
furnishes another example so often witnessed among all classes of men, of 
shrinking from declaring the whole truth, when such declaration contradicts re- 
ceived opinion, or conflicts with popular prejudice. While presenting facts 
and arguments that demonstrate, beyond doubt, that man forms no exception 
to those general laws that govern the organic world, and must therefore have 
come into being in several localities or centres of existence, like the animals 
and plants that surround him, Professor Agassiz yet seems especially anxious 
to declare that diversity of origin has no necessary connexion with diversity 
of species; or that while men were originally created in separate centres of 
existence, they may yet constitute only a single and uniform race. "We do 
not desire -to contest, or contradict, any opinion of so eminent a personage, 
or of a man who has done so much, and is still doing so much for the cause 
of science, and therefore for the cause of humanity; but we cannot avoid 
saying that such a supposition is as unphilosophical as it is untrue in fact. 
There are but few animals of the same species, of the higher organized classes, 
on different continents, or at remote distances, and those most probably carried 
there by man's migrations. Why create in separate localities at all, except to 
conform to and harmonize with the external world about them ? Why, above 
all, create man a single and uniform species in separate localities, with ample 
powers of migration, which enables him to transfer himself from one of these 
centres of existence to another with perfect ease 1 Would not such be indeed 
a work of supererogation 1 

Technically, or in a certain sense, the question of origin, it may be said, 
does not o-overn that of the diversity of the human races; but as the latter is 
the only one of practical importance, and the former of no consequence 
whatever, except as a means for determining these diversities, it is unfortunate 
that Professor Agassiz did not rise above the prejudices of Boston, and boldly 
grapple with the real question at once. 

The question of the origin of mankind, isolated from that of races — the 
specific differences, and the relative capabilities of the several forms of man— 
IS as perfectly useless to mankind at large, as would be a knowledge of the 
first moments of his own existence to the individual. The individual man 
needs to know who are his parents, his brethren, his relationship to those 
about him ; for on this knowledge depend his duties, as it also involves his 
rif^hts. While, where he was born, or when he was born; at what moment, 
or°inwhat house; unless as the means for determining his individuality, is 
of no manner of consequence. So, too, with the several races of men; 
when they were created — whether six thousand years ago, or sixty thousand 
years ago— in the centre of Asia, or in the several localities where history 
finds them— is of no consequence whatever, except as the means of determin- 
ing their specj/ic c/taracter; while, on a knowledge of the latter depend the 
ri °hts, as well as the duties, of the several races to each other; and with our- 
stilves, surrounded or mixed up with two separate and distinct races, one in- 
terlaced, as it were, with our whole social fabric, and the other at no distant 
day thrcdlcnivg to become so, this knowledge is of transcendent importance. 



The Creator has hidden from the individual bolli tlie beginning and llie 
end of his existence. We see and feel the wisdom and benelicence of tiiis 
provision. Were it otherwise, could we know the first moments of "pulin:? 
infancy," and the last moments of "mortal agony," life would be divested of 
all its blessings ; but while this knowledge is forever hidden from us, while 
the individual man can never know his actual origin, of himself, or by him- 
self, such are the laws and relations, or conditions of human existence, that 
his actual identity, his family relationship, all that is necessary to his happi- 
ness, his rights, or the performance of his duties to those of his blood, are as 
perfectly attainable as if he had been endowed with matured reason at the 
moment of birth. The individual is a type of his race ; and whatever is true, 
or natural, or inherent in the individual man, is also common to the race or 
equally true of the aggregate. Thus, while the race may never know its ori- 
gin or starting point, any more than its death or final termination, it can, 
nevertheless, determine with as entire certainty its identity, its specific charac- 
ter, its relationship to other races, and the rights as well as responsibilities that 
are involved, as can the individual man his family relationship. And it is as 
entirely within the scope of our knowledge to understand and define our true 
relations to the other races of this continent, to determine what are our own 
rights, as well as what are our duties to the Negro or Indian inhabiting 
It with us, as can an individual those rights or duties that attach to his indi- 
vidual existence. 

Commencing with the simpler forms of organized existence, and ascending 
in the scale till reaching the Caucasian man, (the most elaborate in his struc- 
ture, and therefore the highest endowed in his faculties,) all intermediate in the 
series, whether human or brute, Mongolian or Negro, Ouran-Outan, or 
Chimpanzee, are alike subject to classification, as well as the lowest and 
simplest forms of organic life. Indeed a classification founded upon positive 
facts, and a true knowledge of the specific differences in human races, is a 
work of less difliiculty than it is in the simpler forms; for the superadded 
moral nature of the former furnishes additional facts for our guidance. 
Throughout the whole world of organic existence there is a perfect adaptation 
of means and ends, and the structural arrangement of each species, or each 
original and permanent creation, is in perfect harmony with its facuhies and 
the'purposes assigned to it by the Creator. This is a truth equally palpable 
m the organization of the individual; those organs, most elaborate and com- 
plex in their structure, are those performing the most important functions. 
Thus the heart, the centre of the vital functions, is comparatively simple in 
its structure ; while the brain, the centre of the animal, as well as the intel- 
lectual functions, is wonderfully complex. Thus, too, the sense of sight is / 
performed through an exceedingly complex and exquisitely delicate apparatus, V 
while the organism of locomotion is comparatively simple. 

This great\nd fundamental law of organized life pervades the whole world 
of animated being, and serves as a positive and unmistakable test or admea- 
surement of the character and relations of all the innumerable series that com- 
pose it. In precise proportion to the complexity of an organ in the human 



8 

body s the importance of function; precisely too as is the complexity c^ 
structural arrangement in anv species, whether human or animal, so, too, if 
the superiority of faculties in such species, and elevation of purposes assigned 
to it by the Creator, in nothing, perhaps, is this truth more palpable than in 
the case of woman; who, with a far more elaborate and exquisitely organized 
nervous system than man, has also finer moral perceptions, as well as more 
delicate sensibilities, while her muscular system and organs of locomotion, 
necessary alone to mere physical power, are infinitely inferior to the other sex. 
The facts of organic life, its laws of development, its necessities, and in the 
more elevated forms of the human races, its rights, as well as the duties that 
attach to it, that are indeed inseparable from it, are so little studied or under- 
stood even by educated persons, that nothing is more common than for such 
to lecture the public on the duty, of forcing their civilization or modes of 
action on other races. Thus an American Secretary of State will talk learn" 
edly about some races who, amalgamating with others, beget a mongrel breed* 
utterly good for nothing, while others with an aptitude for amalgamation, 
beget a more vigorous and progressive race, than either of the originals. How 
near a truth, and yet what an immense distance from it! Had the orator of 
the Colonization Society said that amalgamation with separate races of men, 
as ourselves and the Negro, is followed by a mongrel brood, however superior 
mentally to the Negro, yet vastly inferior to the white, and as certain to perish 
as the mule, or any other hybrid generation ; but that amalgamation with the 
Irishman or German, or any other variety of our own species or race, would be 
followed by a more vigorous stock than ehher of the originals, he would have 
declared an eternal truth. But we may also say, had he known this truth, he 
would not have been the orator of the Colonization Society, or if so, his lec- 
ture would have been very different indeed from that absurd effort to convince 
his audience that they were bound to go to work, and compel the different and 
inferiorhj organized Negro to perform the functions of the Caucasian ; that two 
widely separated organizations, differently endowed and differently designed by 
Almighty power, should be compelled by human force to exercise the same 
faculties, and perform the same purposes: a supposition about as rational, 
and as much dependent on fact, as that a watch and saw-mill are equally 
designed to measure time, or that elephants and mice should catch their prey, 
or supply themselves with food in exactly the same manner. 

Not many centuries since, ignorance of organization doomed women to a 
degraded, almost brutal position; and at this moment, throughout Christen- 
dom, with the exception of the United States, the rights, as also the duties of 
her sex, are imperfectly comprehended. Thus an Enghsh or European 
peasant will harness his wife with his donkey, and compel her to perform the 
grossest drudgery ; and a European gentleman will drive from her seat in 
the coach or car a delicate and fragile woman, and with equal readiness 
grovel in the dust before another, when he discovers that she is a Q,ueen or a 
Duchess, though the first may be of his own race and the latter the wife of a 
Haytien Negro, or the daughter of a Musquito Indian. On the contrary, an 
American, no matter what his social position, or political importance, that 



9 

would refuse to give up his seat to a woman, however humble her condition, 
would be universally despised — indeed would lose caste as a man. This 
diRerence between an American and a European is no accident or caprice of 
public manners, but only the result of higher intelligence in the case of the 
ibrmer. It is not to the individual woman that respect is paid, but to the 
sex — to that delicate and fragile organization which appeals to the noblest 
instincts of the rougher and stronger manhood, and is based on clearer con- 
ceptions, and a wider knowledge of the true relations that naturally exist 
between the sexes. It is often said that Christianity has changed the relations 
and elevated the position of the female sex; but it would be more correct to 
say that increased knowledge of her true nalurc has thus elevated her. In 
barbarous times, even among the Romans, she was but little better than a 
slave, doomed to perform the drudgery of labor: she was rarely permitted, 
even in the patrician class, to be the companion, and never the equal of man : 
but with the increase of knowledge, with clearer conceptions of her real 
nature, her delicately organized nervous system, and her feeble muscular 
powers, her relations to the other sex have undergone an important change : 
thus it may be said, that in precise proportion to the intelligence of a nation 
will be its regard and respect for its women. The same ignorance of organi- 
zation, which in its blind fanaticism would compel the Negro, or would seek ^ 
to compel the Negro, with his different and inferior organization, to perform 
the functions of the white man, also busies itself about "woman's rights," 
and true to the instincts of barbarism, would force her to perform the func- 
tions of the other sex — to be captains of steamboats and bricklayers, as well 
as housekeepers, or directors of the nursery — indeed the advocates of " human 
rights," and "woman's rights," are from very necessity associated together, 
and the delusion in one case is certain also to exist in the other. In Europe, 
except perhaps in France, the masses, kept in profound ignorance of their 
own nature, look upon those v/ho govern them, their Kings and nobles, as a 
superior creation ; and many amongst ourselves with somewhat of the same 
notions hanging about their minds, think that equality or " equal rights" is 
some abstract principle that has been discovered in modern times, and capable 
of universal application: thus they are shocked at the (to them) seeming 
injustice of withholding it from negroes and women, and insist on its immedi- 
ate application to them. Instead of "equality" being a principle, or modern 
discovery, it is simply a fact which has existed from the first creation of man. / 
All men created equal, or all the forms of existence that are organized alike.N 
are equal: thus "equality " is a fact, while those created unlike, are unequal ; 
and to seek to contradict this, to force the Negro to an "equality " with the 
white man, or to compel the woman to exercise the rights, and consequently 
to perform the duties of the other sex, is equally a violation of the fact 
of "equality," as it is an outrage on nature. 

Each spicific organization or form of existence, with its distinct physical 

structure, is also endowed with specific or distinct faculties, and designed by 

the Creator for spccijic purposes. To disregard this, to demand the same 

rights, and compel the same duti»^s. to say tlmt the inferiorly organized and 

2 



10 

inferiorly endowed Ne^o shall be a member of Congress, while the svperiarly 
organized white man shall black boots; or the former a professor in college, 
while the latter hoes cotton ; or that a system shall be brought to bear upon 
them to force an equality, when nature has made none, and permits none, is 
a contradiction of all the laws of organic existence, and as entirely beyond the 
power of man to effect, as the attempt to do so is repugnant to reason. 

So too with woman: with a distinct organization, endowed with distinct 
and peculiar faculties, and designed for distinct and peculiar purposes, those 
wlio would seek to force her out of, or beyond her sphere— to compel her to 
study law, or command a steamboat, as well as nurse a baby, or cook a 
jjnner — would ecjually violate nature, and inflict an outrage upon her. Each 
sex, like each species, has with its peculiar organization distinct duties and 
purposes to fulfil ; and the harmony and well-being of all can only be accom- 
plished when these are understood and acted upon; and when men become 
sufficiently acquainted with themselves to know that all of the same race or 
s})ecics are erjital in fact, they will insist upon "equal rights;" or that the 
Ne<Tro or other inferior races are nnequul to themselves, they will insist that 
they shall not have the same rights with themselves; and comprciiending the 
true relations of the sexes, they will also demand that the rights and duties of 
each shall be in conformity whh these relations. 

To violate these laws — to say, because the Negro has certain general 
resemblances to the white man, or that the female has some qualities resembling , 
the other sex, that the same rules shall apply to them universally; is not only / 
to fight against progress and the nature of things, but would be a rapid stride 
towards barbarism. Indeed, in such an absurd application of inherent right 
or " equality," there is no stopping place in the whole organism of nature. If 
women must exercise the "rights," and perform the duties of men, (for the 
two things are inseparable,) why not children? Certainly a boy of twelve 
or fourteen years of age has as strong muscles, and is as capable of manual 
labor, and has a capacity to perform the duties of men, as well as most 
females. As a physiological fact, there is no positive boundary between men 
and animals; and though the Negro is further separated from the "Ouran 
Outan " than he is from the white or Caucasian man, the actual difference 
between the latter is as distinct, or rather it is a. fact, as well as the former. 
Again; the white, or Caucasian man, as well as the Negro, has some qualities 
in common, not only with the Simiada;, but with the whole Mammalia, and 
remotely even with still lower forms of organized life. Thus the whole 
world of organism is bound together in one continuous chain ; though the 
links in that chain are distinct and specific, and as plain and comprehensible 
to human reason as they are wisely and beneficently designed by the Creator. 

"Where, with these facts before us, can we or should we stop? The Negro 
has not only more in common with us than he has with the Ouran-Oulan, 
but really has nothing in common with the latter that we ourselves have not, 
excei)t that he has these common qualities more prominently ; but should we 
thcrt.-fure attempt, in all respects, to make the Negro our equal, and deny to 
the Ouran Outan everything? Or rather, should we not, in conformity with 



11 

the eternal and immutable facts of nature, grant to the Negro all that he pos- 
sesses in common with us, and no morej and to the Ouran-Outan, and still 
nferior creatures, what belong to them, or have consideration for them to the 
extent that they approximate to us? Unfortunately, the dislinclions that 
separate, yet bind closely together, all the species of men, have not been investi- 
gated or understood, and a few general resemblances have been confouiKifil 
and mistaken, so that a very large portion of mankind are entirely ignorant of 
their true character. 

For a long time the specific distinctions, and therefore the proper uses 
of animals, were similarly misunderstood. Even the Caucasian man once 
used the horse for food instead of labor; and yet among Mongolic nations 
horse meat is regularly sold in their markets. A few general resemblances, or 
accidental coincidences, have indeed governed the world. An ignorant okl 
woman has found a patient to recover from chill-fever, though nothing has 
been done except to cut as many notches in a stick as the patient has had 
paroxysms, and straightway she becomes a great fever doctor, and her skill 
trusted in by respectable people. So, too, ignorance of organization, the 
specific qualities, and therefore the proper uses of animals, and the specijic 
qualities of human races, have been misunderstood; a few general resem- 
blances or accidental circumstances are alone seen ; and ignorant self-suili- 
ciency jumps to the conclusion that notches in a stick will cure chill-fever as 
well as quinine ; that the horse was made for food instead of labor; and that 
white men and negroes are designed for the exercise of the same rights, and 
the practice of the same duties. 

If the Creator had designed the horse for food, he would have created him 
differently, and, instead of the tough and stringy muscles so appropriate to 
strength and swiftness, would have constructed him with reference to human 
digestion. And if he had designed the Negro for the same purpose as the 
white or Caucasian man, he would have given him the same faculties— or 
rather we should say, he would not have been created at all, for the single • 
fact that he exists is decisive of the will and intention of the Creator. In 
Europe, where women are placed at the head of nations and rule over mil- 
lions of men, and where their husbands, whom nature places at the head of 
the household, stand behind their chairs, to receive their orders, thus outraging 
common sense as much as nature herself, and where fathers kiss the hands of 
their own off-spring, as their slaves or subjects, "woman's rights" should 
flourish in such congenial soil : for the more the laws of nature are violated 
and reason trampled under foot, the longer such a "system" may be continued. 
Or, when the millions in profound ignorance of their rights, are not permitted 
to enjoy the tenth part of the proceeds of their labor, while a mere fraction 
(men like themselves) live in idle and extravagant luxury at their expense, it 
may be expected that "human rights" or " negro rights," or the elevation of 
the Negro to that same level which the millions occupy, would be actively 
advocated; for here too, as in the case of family relations, the more the laws of 
nature are trampled upon, the longer those who profit by such a condition of 
things may hope to retain them. 



12 

But in the United Stales, among a people almost universally educated, and 
wliere tlie fact of "equality" is almost universally understood, and acted on 
personally as well as politically, the advocacy of woman's "equality" in the 
sense that they argue it, or "equality" of the Negro to the white man in any 
sense whatever, is inexcusable on the^ground of ignorance; and those thus 
warring against the laws of nature and the progress of society deserve to be 
treated as its enemies — or as absolute maniacs, and irresponsible for the evils 
they seek to inflict upon it. 

Unknown probably to themselves-, they are the dupes and tools of the 
enemies of Democratic institutions; and if their monstrous crusade against 
the harmony of nature, as well as the progress of society could be success- 
fully carried out, the nation would not only go back to the anti-progressive 
and brutalizing "systems" of Europe, and the masses degenerate again into 
the wretched serfs or slaves of kings and aristocrats, but intermingling their 
blood with an inferim- race, and turning their men into women and their 
women into me.i, they would become the most degraded and contemptible 
assemblage of mongrels — of monster women and emasculated men, ever 
known upon the face of the earth. 

To effect this result— at any rate to hold in check the tendency of demo- 
cratic ideas, to sustain and prolong its own existence, its sway and control 
over the masses, European monarchism, especially the British portion of it, 
originated the " idea" of " free negroism," and a crusade in favor of inferior 
races. Its design was two-fold : first, as an antagonism for holding in check 
the progress of the American Democracy ; and, in the second place as a false 
issue to its own oppressed masses. It began with Johnson, Wilberforce, Pitt, 
and others of the most bigoted school of British tories ; and though some 
well-meaning but deluded persons, like Fox and Sheridan, gave it their sup- 
port, as a general thing, both in Europe and America, those most bigoted, and 
most hostile to the freedom and equality of their own race have been its espe- 
cial advocates. The time perhaps has not yet arrived to estimate this " negro" 
movement at its true value; but it will come, and when it does, British 
" philanthrophy," "human freedom," "emancipation," "abolition," or 
whatever it may be termed, will be known, as it is in fact, the widest spread 
imposture, and the vilest fraud ever practised on human credulity. 

To carry on this imposture, the theory of a single race was absolutely 
essential ; for on that alone hangs not only the merit of British " philan- 
thropy," but the character of the British Government; indeed, the continued 
rule of the British aristocracy. Thus there has been brought to its support 
an extent or amount of literary ability, of perverted science, of political, 
social, moral, and even religious influence, unexampled in history; and the 
actual _/ac/.s, so plain and simple that any one might investigate and thoroughly 
comprehend them in far less time than it would require to read a Negro novel 
or an abolition report, have been kept hidden from millions of men whose 
dearest interests are directly dependent on a true knowledge of them. 

The reaction of these eflbrts is felt amongst ourselves. British books and 
riush writers are btandaid authorities with a portion of our people. ThuS;, 



13 

the reasoning however absurd, or the assumption of facts however unfounded, 
is never disputed or inquired into. The very terms oi' freedom and shivery 
are wholly perverted; and in the eyes of this misguided portion of our people, 
the British aristocracy the most deadly, as the most powerful enemy of liberty, 
is believed to be its especial and reliable champion. Of the many absurd and 
far-fetched comparisons relied on to sustain their theory of a single race, and 
consequent "equality " of the negro, that which assumes an identity between 
the infancy of a superior race and \he j^resent condition of an inferior one, has 
been most resorted to. Thus, remembering that their ancestors were once 
savages or unbelieving Pagans — or at any rate, according to Bulwer, got along 
without the aid of pantaloons— they assume that they were exactly in the 
same social condition as are now the woolly haired or typical tribes in the 
interior of Africa, and that circumstances or opportunities are alone needed to 
enable the latter to become the equals of the modern Britons. 

Even Hamilton Smith, generally as sound in his reasonings, as correct in 
his facts, is constrained by the abolition sentiment of his countrymen to give 
in his adhesion to this ridiculous parallel; while Pritchard and others exalt 
it into a positive proof of their favorite theory of a single race ; when in truth 
the facts Avhich they thus rely upon, even if admitted to be true — that is, if 
the ancient Britons were, socially considered, in the exact condition of the 
typical Africans of our times — the fact would be a fatal objection to their 
theory. But there is not, nor can there be, any parallel between them. The 
ancient Britons were not heathens, in the sense given to that term in our times. 
The Romans called all other nations besides themselves barbarians, and thus 
applied that term to the Britons; but there could be but little, if any, resem- 
blance between their condition and that of the typical Africans, or that of the 
dark races found on the islands of the Pacific. They were doubtless emi- 
grants from the continent, and must have carried with them a portion of the 
art and intelligence of the continental communities ; and the simple fact of 
working the metals, of having manufactures, of drawing huge chains across 
the entrances or outlets of their rivers to exclude the Roman invaders, shows 
conclusively that they were infinitely advanced beyond those wretched tribes 
in the interior of Africa, or the islands of the South Seas, who thousands of 
years after that event have not the slightest idea of working metals, and 
whose highest advancement in art is to fashion their spear-heads from wood 
or the bones of fishes. 

Compared with the polished Romans, the primitive Celts of the British 
islands were doubtless only half civihzed; but from the remains of Druidical 
monuments, and the accounts of Roman historians themselves, there is abundant 
evidence to show that they bore no resemblance to the black and brown races 
that under the name oi heathens enhst such a large share of misguided benevo- 
lence in modern times. Indeed, from the very earliest moments of authentic 
history to the present day, there has never been an instance where any branch 
or portion of the white or Caucasian race has been found in a state oHieathen- 
ism, in the modern sense of that term ; and it may also be said that there has 
never been found any dark race except in that condition. 



14 

Some branches of the former race have been at times more advanced than 
others, as some of the black or olivaceous races have been more barbarous 
than others; but giving the term heathen exactly its modern meaning, no 
tr/ji7e heathens liavc ever been known to exist, as no branch or tribe of the 
dark races h;\s ever been discovered that was not such. This single fact is 
sufficient to show not only the original differences of the races, but the im- 
mense natural superiority of the white race, and to show also the blind 
however well-meaning inhumanity, which prompts deluded persons to 
become missionaries to inferior races, under the mistaken notion that they are 
doing them a benefit, when, in fact, they are simply destroying them, by 
forcing upon them ideas and habitudes unnatural, and indeed impossible to 
them -the truth of which may now be seen in the Sandwich and other 
islands, where the inferior race has fallen a victim to this well-meaning but 
misguided proselytism. We do not desire to cast any unkind or ungenerous 
aspersions on those well-meaning but deluded persons who engage in what is 
termed missionary labor; but the truth must be out some time or other, and 
the sooner the better, especially for the victims of the delusion. It does not 
follow that the inferior races, or those in our times termed heathens, may not, 
under certain circumstances, receive Christianity. Its divine truths are 
suited for any and every degree of mental condition — to the feeble child, as 
well as the philosopher ; but the civilization, the ideas, the mental habitudes 
of the Caucasian race, are as impossible to the Negro organization or the 
Negro faculties, or the multitudes of heathens of the Pacific islands, as the 
most abstruse problems of mathematics are to the capacities of an infant; 
and when forced upon them, or sought to be forced upon them, as certainly 
end in their destruction, as it would destroy an animal to exercise faculties, 
or to force upon it the habits of another specifically different. 

The results of missionary efforts demonstrate this truth beyond all doubt. 
In some parts of India or China, or elsewhere, where a portion of the popu- 
lation is Caucasian, they have made a few permanent converts; but in every 
single instance where these converts have been of a different race, they 
have relapsed into heathenism; or, (as in the Sandwich islands, and univer- 
sally with our Indian tribes, where the ideas of the white man predominate,) 
the converts, or rather the victims, perish. Thus that mistaken and perverted 
benevolence, which, turning its back upon the mass of ignorance, and vice, 
and misery of its own race, traverses seas and continents to waste itself oa 
impossibilities, has undoubtedly committed greater injuries than it has con- 
ferred benelits upon the objects of its labors. 

While, however, there is no correspondence, and but little resemblance, 
between the condition of the ancient Britons and the present typical African, 
it is true that the latter is a type of the early, or supposed early, social condi- 
tion of our own race. Although we do not possess any actual knowledge 
on the subject, it is believed that the hunter profession or condition was the 
commencing or starting-point of the Caucasian man; but this (to us) transi- 
tion slate is natural and permanent with the Negro. Thus, had the ancient 
Driions been the perfect heathens which their descendants, in order to make 



15 

up a case for the Negro, assume them to have been, the fundamental differ- 
ences between the races is strikingly manifested in the fact, that while tlie 
Briton has carried his name and power and civilization over a large portion of 
the earth, the Negro remains at this moment where both stood two thousand 
years ago. And while, if the British language and British ideas, or tiie re- 
sults of British progress, were instantly annihilated or stricken out of being, 
the whole world would be left in comparative darkness; yet the entire Negro 
race might be stricken out of existence, without disturbing the intellectual 
welfare of mankind ; or, beyond the mere human instinct that might shud- 
der at this destruction of physical existence, have any more influence on the 
moral world than the destruction of all the horses, or of any race of animals. 

Again: were the Negro of to-day like the Briton of two thousand years 
ago, why has the former stood still, while the latter has made such wonderful / 
progress? The assertion that the Negro only requires opportunity to mani- 
fest capacity for progress, aside from the physiological impossibility in the 
case, is historically disproved ; for whatever the degree or extent of British 
savageism at the time of the Roman invasion, the Britons were far less favored 
by circumstances than the Negro. Indeed it is difficult to find any race or 
nation so favored by circumstances as the typical African. He was in direct 
and immediate contact with Egyptian, Carthaginian, and Roman civiliza- 
tion — with the earliest forms and conditions of human improvement, and sur- 
rounded with art and intelligence, with the highest manifestations of the 
human intellect, centuries before the Anglo-Saxon, or indeed any modern 
branch of the Caucasian race, had emerged from barbarism. But while wit- 
nessing, he had no connexion with this early civilization, or, if he had, it 
was exactly such a connexion as he has with us at the present time. There 
is no instance to be found in all history, where any branch of the Negro race, 
or any tribe, or even an individual, has been civilized, in the sense we gene- 
rally understand that terra. Their relations to the Egyptians, and afterwards 
to the Carthaginians, were those of involuntary, or rather we should say 
voluntary servitude : for there is no instance where the race in its pure form 
ever fought a battle for its independence, or contested the natural supremacy 
of the Caucasian. 

Centuries before the British islands became Christian, the Negro was under 
the full blaze and within the very focus of Christianity. Before there was a 
Pope of Rome, or a Bishop in Britain, African (Caucasian) Bishops might 
be counted by scores : thus, instead of requiring circumstances only or oppor- 
tunities for manifesting equal capacity for progress with the descendants of 
the ancient Britons, the Negro has not only had greater opportunity for im- 
provement than has the Briton, but infinitely more than any of the nations of 
modern Europe. The Negro has however remained throughout all these 
changes and mutations of other races exactly the same — either a heathen or a 
servant, either a nomad or wanderer of the desert, existing as an animal of 
prey on snails and bugs, or within the precincts of civilized life in that natural 
subordination to superior races assigned him by the hand of nature. And to 
say that because the white man may once (as a transition state) have been a 



16 

nomad or hunter, as well as the Negro, that therefore the latter only requires 
opportunity to manifest equal capacity for progress as the former, is as absurd 
as it would be to say that the Negro at the South may yet rival his master, 
because he has as much capacity now, as the former had when a child. 

Another notion much more common, however, with Europeans than our- 
selves, attributes the diflerences in races, or those that distinguish whites and 
negroes, to some such causes as those proilucing the Durham and other choice 
kinds of cattle. Pritchard the most eminent among the single-pair theorists, 
alter much doubt and difficulty was compelled however to give this up, and 
in fact every other hypothesis on the subject, and finally to declare that the 
causes whatever they were, were beyond human detection ; a sage conclusion 
truly, but made still more absurd by afterwards suggesting the possibility of 
some occult atmospheric chemistry. The crossing of varieties which pro- 
duce improved stocks or breeds of cattle is a plain and simple affair. The more 
extensively the branches or varieties of the same race or species are crossed 
or amalgamated with others, the more perfect the product. This is a great 
physiological law, as true with man as with the inferior animals; thus those 
communities or nations who mingle their blood most extensively with other 
nations or branches of their own race will always be the most energetic and 
powerful. 

The best example of this in ancient times is seen in the Romans, who, 
from a mere band of outlaws, became the most powerful people recorded in 
history. They were originally adventurers, fillibusters, vagabonds, from all 
the surrounding tribes or communities; who after laying the foundation of 
their city, stole their wives of the Sabines, and, thus still more extensively 
crossing their blood, built up that magnificent nationality that governed the 
world two thousand years, and which finally decayed and fell to pieces for 
the want of that very thing which originated their greatness, quite as much 
perhaps as from any other cause. 

When conquering the surrounding nations, all of whom were of the same 
race as themselves, instead of amalgamating with them, and thus preserving 
their energy and power by crossing their blood, they made slaves of them. 
Thus, in the latter days of the empire, when all political power passed from 
the hands of the plebians, and the Roman nobility or patrician order, (like 
the European nobility of the present day,) became a sort of close corporation, 
intermingling their blood only within their order, the empire rapidly declined, 
and the name of Roman finally became as contemptible as it had once been 
formidable. 

Never before, however, has the result of admixtures of the same race been 
80 remarkably manifested as at the present moment in the United States. 
Here, all the varieties and sub-varieties oi the Caucasian race — the Celtic, Ger- 
manic, Sclavonic, and their off-shoots the English, Irish, French, Spanish, 
Prussian, Polish, Hungarians, etc., mingle their blood in a common reservoir, 
and have already laid the foundation of an empire unparalleled in its material 
growth, or the enterprise and energy of its people. Even with the purely 
native population, the results of admixture is strikingly displayed. Tiius, New 



17 

York, with its extensive lntermixtur>i of Dutcli and New England people, 
has the most vigorous and enterprising population of any of the old States; 
and the two vast columns of emitjrants constantly moving westward from the 
old Puritan and Cavalier States, mingling their blood together in the valley of 
the Mississippi, has resulted in forming a population which, in all the essen- 
tials of true manhood, of bravery, enterprise, high and chivalrous sense of 
honor, of patriotism, and devotion to freedom, is unequalled and unapproach- 
able on the face of the earth. While the results of extensive intermarrying 
or amalgamations of varieties are thus manifest, and conformity to the physio- 
logical law attended with such wide-spread benefits to the nations or commu- 
nities, or indeed individuals, that obey it, a departure or a violation of it 
is equally marked in the punishment that nature always inflicts on those who 
disobey her laws. 

In regard to the first or a mere departure from the law, European 
*'royalism" presents a striking instance. 

Assuming to be superior to the masses of their own race, they intermarry 
within their royal circle; and a time soon comes when, from being equal, they 
become absolutely inferior to those they govern. Thus, with the exception 
of the Bonapartes and Bernadottes, and possibly the royal family of Russia, 
all the kings and queens of the day are naturally considered inferior to the 
most degraded portion of the populations they rule over. It may be difficult, 
perhaps, to determine the precise point where this inferiority commences, or 
the extent of it ; but of the fact itself there is no doubt whatever. Nor does 
the punishment stop with mere mental inferiority ; the whole physical struc- 
ture is equally involved; insanity, or more often perhaps idiocy, scrofula, 
epilepsy, the most frightful, as the most disgusting of human diseases, 
become heir-looms in royal families, and, like their crowns and sceptres, are 
transmitted to their contemptible offspring. Finally, as if to stamp upon 
them an inferiority beyond possibility of mistake, nature dooms them to 
impotency ; and, like accidental, hybrid, or monstrous generations, they ulti- 
mately perish. The pretence so common in Europe of royal or noble persons 
tracing back their pedigree for countless generations, like everything else con- 
nected with this sham humanity, is all a fraud. There are doubtless persons 
among the English aristocracy, who fancy themselves the direct and lineal 
descendants of the companions of the conqueror, but who are far more likely 
to be the descendants of the peasants or yeomen of the times of Cromwell, 
and, by the way, have vastly deteriorated from that point since. 

Such a thing as lineal descent, or descent of blood instead of name or title, 
beyond a certain point or extent of time, is a physiological impossibility. 
Thus, the present hereditary royalty and nobility of Europe, feeble and 
emasculated as it is, is entirely dependent for what httle vitahty it actually 
possesses, to legitimate or illegitimate intermarrying with the blood of the 
people ; and if the present royal houses would strictly and in fact, confine 
their inter-unions within their own royal circle, but very few years would 
elapse before they would become totally extinct. 

The violation of the physiological law we are considering, is equally mani- 
3 



18 

fcst, as evasion or Jepnrtures from it ; indeed, intermingling; the blood of races 
essentially diflTercnt, is, in respect to tlie superior race, at least, attended with 
wider spread mischief than the decay or destruction of royaky, or a class, as 
It involves the destruction of a whole people. It is, in fact, social suicide; 
and can only under favorable circumstances, or where the superior race vast- 
ly predominate in numbers, be practised without ending in complete social 
destruction. Its consequences are now to be seen in Mexico, Central Ameri- 
ca, Lower Canada, or wherever amalgamation with the native race has oc- 
curred. The Spanish conqucrers, Cortez, Pizzaro, and the Alvarados, the 
proudest and noblest of the great race to which they belonged, are in our 
times represented by the wretchetl hybrids and mongrels of the South — more 
intelligent, perhaps, but yet in many respects actually inferior to the inferior 
race itself. By this amalgamation the Spaniards parted with their own superi- 
ority, while the inferior race has only temporarily gained what the former lost. 
It is a fundamental law, that hybridism must perish ; and no mixed race or ac- 
cidental generation can exist beyond a determinate period : thus the mongrel 
population of Mexico and Central America, located mainly in the cities, 
since the supply of white blood has teen cut ofT by independence of Spain, 
rapidly declines and falls behind the native race of the rural districts; and a 
time must come when the former totally disappearing, the native race will 
return to the condition it was at the time of the Spanish conquest, and every 
thing impressed on this continent by the Spaniards as utterly and entirely dis- 
appear as if it had never existed. The same results, though modified some- 
what, may be seen in Canada. Here, however, unlike the case of Mexico, 
the superior race predominate in numbers; and though embarrassed, and, for 
the time being debased by absorbing the inferior one, uhiraately recovers 
from it; while Mexico — indeed all Spanish America — is only protracting a 
sickly existence to end in death, so far as Spanish blood, and Spanish ideas, 
and Spanish civilization are involved. On the contrary, the Anglo-American, 
with that high instinct of superiority that so remarkably distinguishes it from 
all other branches of the Caucasian race, utterly refused all admixture with 
the aboriginals; and this great fact, instead of Puritan sermons or Puritan 
morals, or any other or all other causes, alone or mainly explains its present 
superiority. It made no compromise with the native race : in deeds, if not in 
words, they said to the natives they must be as they were, or die; and as the 
latter would not, and indeed could not, be only as God and nature had made 
tliem, they are driven first over the Alleghanies, then the Mississippi, again 
into the recesses of the Rocky Mountains ; and now, met by fresh invaders 
on the Pacific coast, the time is probably not distant when they will totally 
disappear within the boundaries of the Union, — a fate universal mith all in- 
ftrior races, when in contact with mperior ones, imless saved by the protection of 
scrvittule, as at the South, or through the nun of the latter by amalgamation, as 
in .Mexico. Thus, of the twenty or twenty-five millions, of American citi- 
zens that form the nation, all are of pure blood, though interlaced with two 
other distinct races; and while these twenty millions of pure Caucasians are 
giving the greatest possible development to the physiological law of extended 



19 

crossings or interunion with iheir own race, that only portion of it (European 
royahsm and hereditary aristocracy) which is tainted and impoverished, is, 
together with the inferior races, totally exchided; and none but the noblest 
and healthiest blood of the most elevated of all the human races throbs in the 
mighty heart of the American Democracy. 

Instead, then, of the Negro being, as some English and European writers 
have supposed, a product of some kind of amalgamation, or that our own 
race is the result of some remote admixture of other forms of men, it is 
plain to the most unthinking, when they contemplate for a moment the results 
of admixture on this continent, that, while our national energy and greatness 
is mainly the result of wide spread intermixtures with branches or varieties of 
our own race, that energy and that greatness has been alone preserved by our 
refusal to amalgamate with the Negro or Indian. And it is equally clear if we 
ever lose the instinct of superiority, so as to dilute our blood, and descend to 
the level of the inferior races; especially, if we ever become so deteriorated 
as to seek to realize Negro "equality," that the same results will follow us; 
and though vastly predominating in numbers we may never actually die out, 
as the Spaniards are destined to do, yet the physical pollution would be fol- 
lowed by moral debasement, fatal to the nation, and finally end in our conquest 
and subjection to some purer branch of our own race. 

The actual condition of European society, however; the extreme poverty, 
misery, ignorance, and brutishness of the laboring classes ; the enormous 
wealth, luxury, titles, and artificial superiority of the aristocracy — the long 
continuance of this state of things from century to century, and generation 
after generation — has become so fixed, so impressed upon the mind, almost 
upon the very nature of the people, tliat they believe it perfectly natural ; and 
having no other standard by which to judge, suppose the Negro, in some way 
or other, to be as much a product of oppression, of accident, or external cir- 
cumstances, as their own peasantry, or any other depressed and brutalized 
class among themselves. 

Thus nothing is more common than English writers boasting of the liber- 
ality of British institutions, because the English peasant, with all his admitted 
degradation, is still superior to Negro "slaves ;" and the English laboring 
classes are often seen to contribute, from their scanty support, to glorify some 
abolition hero or heroine, under the deplorable delusion that the condi- 
tion of the negroes being worse than their own, they are bound to sympa- 
thize with them, and do honor to those who would elevate them, or, in other 
words, who would change the nature which the Almighty has given them. 

Utterly ignorant of the Negro— of his nature, of his wants, his capacities — 
assuming him to be like themselves ; that centuries of oppression, of slavery, 
of outrage, has not only crushed his intellect, but blackened his skin and 
twisted his hair — in a word, transformed and deformed his physical as well as 
intellectual nature, American "slavery" is, to their ignorant minds and dis- 
torted imaginations, a frightful monstrosity. Thus there are, doubtless, multi- 
tudes of over-worked, famishing wretches, swarming in British factories and 
British mines, who feel profound ratitude to their kinffs and nobles who have 



20 

not ypt reduced them to the same deplorable condition. There are in England 
four millions of paupers, and ton millions of laborers, to whom the ownership of 
property, whatever may be the theories or abstractions about British freedom, 
&.C., is just as impossible, as a. fact, as it is in the case of Southern negroes. 
Most of ihera are also in a far less favorable position for acquiring intelligence 
than those same Southern "slaves;" and there are multitudes of men and 
women and children, whose joints and muscles and skeletons are so distorted 
by excessive labor, by privation and physical suffering, as almost to seem to 
belong to another race. But all these results of wrong and oppression, fright- 
ful and monstrous as they are, are nothing in the minds of Englishmen when 
comjiared with American "slavery," or to the oppressions and wrongs sup- 
posed to be inflicted on the negro, which, according to tlieii' notions, have not 
only crushed his intellect below that of the most degraded class of their own 
population, but, in some incomprehensible manner, changed his physi- 
cal structure, and blackened his skin, as well as degraded his mind. Thus 
are two things, or two conditions, totally dissimilar, confounded with each 
other; and the single fact, that the British peasant is vastly superior to the 
Southern negro, is assumed as conclusive proof that he is less oppressed or 
less wronged; and British and American abolitionists rely mainly upon this 
fact as the basis of their hostility to negro slavery. The delusion in the case 
consists in confounding the results ot human contrivances, or of man's op- 
pressions, with the works of the Creator. The English peasant is the work 
of British institutions; the negro the creation of nature. The former artifi- 
cialh/ degraded ; the latter nalurallij inferior. 

Of the multitudes of stolid and debased peasants that till the lands of a 
British " noble," there is probably not a single one who, if taken when in his 
cradle, and bred as the offspring of a Sutherland, but would be his equal; 
indeed, in view of the physiological deterioration of hcrcditanj aristocracy, 
most probably superior to the standard of the noble order ; while the offspring 
of Sutherland, bred in the hovel of the laborer, would, in no respect whatever 
vary from the ordinary standard of peasant life. 

Among the thousands of deformed and brutalized women of the mines of 
Cornwall, except those deformed by scrofulous diseases, and this, by the 
way, amid all their filth, and want, and suffering, is not as often the case as 
among the " noble" order — there is not a single one who, had she been 
exchanged with Mrs. Sutherland while in their cradles, but would exhibit all 
the personal graces and mental capacities, if not the " philanthropy," of 
that interesting person. Nor would the latter, excluded from the light of day 
from very childhood, and compelled to perform the labor of the other sex, as 
is the fate of these unfortunates, differ from them in the slightest particular. 

The law of reparation, or restoration, perpetually in action in the human 
body, which counteracting accidents or external circumstances restores health 
and preserves individual existence, is also in constant action to preserve specks 
or original creations ; and no matter what the external circumstances, or 
what the oppression of a ruling class, it is utterly beyond its power to alter 
the laws of nature. It may enact laws of primogeniture, and hedge itself 



21 

about with all manner of fictitious rules or usages ; it may oppress, and 
starve, and murder, even as it has some three milUons of Irishmen ; but it 
cannot change tlie eternal laws of nature in a single particular. The Eng- 
lish peasant, and the woman of the mines, however deformed or distorted 
tlieir limbs, or however repulsive in their brutal physiognomy, as well as 
their moral habitudes, only become so after their birth, and through the ope- 
ration of the artificial system under which they five. Thus, of all that horde 
of brutalized womanhood in the mines of Cornwall, there is probably not a 
single one that does not bring into the world as perfecdy formed children, 
with all the inherent and natural capachy of intellect and of physical beauty, as 
the females of the ruling class. Nature is always true to herself, and permits 
no departure from that eternal type stamped upon the race by the hand of the 
Almighty. A man may lose a hmb, or both, or all his limbs, and his off- 
spring will be as perfect as ever ; even congenital deformities are not propa- 
gated; monstrosities usually perish, or at any rate are incapable of begeuing 
offspring. This law is invariable and immutable; and no morbid or abnormal 
growth, or departure from the original type, is ever permanently possible. 
Those instances of the transmission of disease sometimes seen in families or 
individuals are no exception. A man may violate the physical laws of his 
own being ; he may be a glutton, a drunkard, or lecher, and his tainted and 
diseased blood be transmitted to his offspring; but this is a condition of dis- 
ease throughout — it is the punishment that nature inflicts on those who vio- 
late her laws — a process even for restoring the normal and healthy order. 
The descendants of such suffer for the sins of their fathers ; but avoiding 
these sins themselves, and intermingling their own with purer blood, all taint 
or trace of the original sin disappears in a generation or two ; or if, as in the 
case of "royalty," they mingle their blood within a limited circle with 
those as tainted and diseased as themselves, they become idiotic and impo- 
tent, and totally perish. Thus it is, that the original form, stamped upon 
a race or species, is perpetual and invariable. The rule or oppression of a 
class, or of one nation over another, can never, in the slightest degree, change 
or modify its actual nature. It may pervert or cultivate, degrade or elevate, 
brutalize or improve, a single generation ; but all this terminates with such 
generation, and the succeeding one again comes into being just as it came 
from the hand of God on the morning of creation. 

The artificial difference between a British " noble" and a British peasant 
seems, to be sure, immense : the law of primogeniture, and the ten thousand 
other contrivances which produce these differences, can go no farther, how- 
ever, than the life of each. Their offspring again comes into being exactly 
alike, exacdy equal ; and again the macliinenj must be resorted to, to make 
them artificially unlike and unequal. One, from the moment of birth, is sur- 
rounded with every appliance for developing all the mental capabilities ; the 
other, from the moment of birth, is surrounded with all the influences that 
prevent this development. This machinery, worked for centuries, is now 
brought to such perfection, that should some outside power — some Louis 
Napoleon, or American Democracy— invade the country, and retaining the 



22 

system, only change the persons — place the Palmerstons, Stanleys, and Mrs. 
SutlK-rlamls, in the factories and mines, and an equal number of mining 
women and laborers in the castles and palaces of the former, the only percep- 
tible difference in the succeeding generations would be a more vigorous and 
energetic nobihty, thus renovated by the stronger and healthier blood of the 
people. 

Ignorant of this eternal and immutable law of equality, which God has 
impressed upon all those who belong to the race or species; and the only de- 
parture from which is in the very class that assumes to be superior — (and 
even that is only temporarily inferior, for the constant tendencies to idiocy and 
impotency in hereditary royalty or aristocracy, is the process that nature em- 
ploys to get rid of them altogether, and restore the natural order, or healthy 
standard of the species,) Europeans, accustomed to such an artificial and 
unnatural condition of society, actually believe that the "noble" (so called) 
is naturally superior to the peasant. Thus, though they also probably think 
the planter superior to the negro servant in some similar manner, yet the 
peasant, being vastly superior to the negro, is, to them, conclusive proof that 
the oppression of the latter is infinitely greater; and negro "slavery" a 
greater outrage on the natural rights of men than monarchism or the rule of 
an aristocracy. 

But the condition of things at the South has no resemblance whatever to 
the artificial one confounded with it. The negro servant, or " slave," taken 
from some Uncle Tom's Cabin, when an infant, and bred in the mansion of 
the planter, unlike the case of the British peasant, remains the same. He 
may be taken North — to England — may be educated at Oxford, or bred in the 
family of the Sutherlands, and supphed with all the wealth of the Roths- 
childs ; yet the whole combined power of mankind will be utterly incompe- 
tent to change him the millionth part of an atom. 

To be sure, his intellect will be, or may be, cultivated beyond that usually 
manifested by his race ; but with the same color, the same hair, the same 
formed limbs, the same animalized pelvis, the same small and receding 
brain — in a word, with the same physical inferiority, will be the same mental 
inferiority that the Creator has stamped upon the race. He may, whh the 
fullest development of the faculties inherent in his race, together with the 
imitated or borrowed intelligence of the superior one thus forced upon him, 
seem superior to vast multitudes of uncultivated white men. But if of pure 
negro blood, it is as impossible for him to reach the standard capacity of the 
white man, as it is to change any other order or form of nature, and as 
wholly beyond the power of human force to accomplish, as it would be to 
change a cow into a horse, or to raise the dead, or, in a word, as to change 
the color of his skin. 

The British "noble," the Sutherlands, and people of that kind, with all 
the wealth in their hands, with the thing called government — a mere machine 
for manufacturing paupers ; with the entire Shopocracy, or middle class, as 
police agents to watch and guard the people; with a large standing army, while 
tht.' latter are totally disarmed — arc yet compelled to resort to fraud and fiction 



23 

to keep up the delusion that they are superior, or that their assumed superi- 
ority is real. Thus they paint and decorate themselves something after the 
fashion of our Indian "medicine men," and with high-sounding titles, keep 
themselves at an immense distance, and employ flunkies, or middle men, who 
affect a profound awe and reverence for this painted and bespangled humanity, 
and thus impress their ignorant dupes with the notion that it is indeed what it 
pretends to be. On the contrary, the southern planter, with a consciousness 
of superiority that would be ashamed to resort to fiction or imposture of any 
kind, takes off his coat, and works in the same field and at the same labor as 
his slave. The thought of the latter contesting his superiority never once en- 
ters his mind. As said by as sound a statesman as gallant soldier of the 
South, "we no more think of a negro insurrection than we do of a rebellion 
of our cows or horses." The planter rules as naturally as the negro obeys 
iastinctivcly ; the relation between them is natural, harmonious, and necessary, 
and their interests, being indivisible, there can be no cause or motive, either 
for the abuse of power on the part of the master, or of rebellion on the 
part of the servant. Of course there are instances of brutal masters, as in 
all the conditions of life, however natural and harmonious; there will also be 
instances or exceptions to the contrary. But the fact that there has never 
been an attempt at insurrection of the blacks (for the few instances of murders 
and outrages on some plantations have nothing of the character of an insur- 
rection,) and that not a single soldier has ever been employed to preserve 
order in the slave States — with nothing, indeed, but the ordinary constabulary 
force, and that even less than in the free States — is a sufficient proof of the 
naturalness of the relations which unite so harmoniously two such widely 
separated races. 

In all the countries of Europe, nearly half the people are armed to keep 
down the other half. England is no exception; for though her standing 
army is less, in perfect keeping with the fraud and hypocrisy of her whole 
system, an armed police, equal to the regular soldiery of the more manly 
despotisms of the continent is kept in pay and constant, unsleeping activity 
to keep down the people. Was the European aristocracy to place itself in 
the same position towards the people that the planters of the South do, in 
respect to their negroes — were kings and nobles to disband their armies, to 
present themselves stripped of all artificial support, face to face with their 
subjects, as the planter does daily and constantly to his negroes — to trust to 
their assumed and fictitious superiority, as the planter does to his real and 
natural superiorhy, the entire crew of fictitious and painted humanity would 
be received with a roar of derision from the Volga to the Thames ; and their 
actual inferiority and utter insignificance would be so palpably revealed to the 
people, that the latter would scarcely condescend to punish them for their past 
transgressions. 

Even as things are nov?', if some Sutherland, for instance, should go among 
his peasants, and, taking off his coat, go to work with them, and trust to his 
supposed or assumed superiority, where would he be at the end of a single 
week 1 The men who only see him at a distance, living in a castle surround- 



24 

eJ with hordes of miserable menials, and followed by lordly retinues, thus 
brought in actual contact with him ; thus discovering the cheat and impos- 
ture that is imposed on them; thus able to see what it is that rules and governs 
them; — however ignorant these men, the illusion would vanish forever, and 
from this single point would commence, in all pfobabiUty, a tnovement that 
would end in revolutionizing the country. The southern planter, on the con- 
trary, needs no artificial support to sustain his authority — no fraud or fiction, 
or intermediate flunkery, to work on the imagination of his slaves — no paint 
and feathers, or high-sounding titles, nor any part or parcel whatever 
of that vast and complicated machinery of fraud and force, so universal 
in Europe — to keep down his inferiors. His authority is stamped upon his 
nature by the hand of God, instead of being the work of laws of primogeni- 
ture or the result of human contrivances. 

These two things, which have no resemblance whatever — which are as far 
apart as truth and falsehood, as right and wrong, as the laws of nature and 
the results of human contrivances, are confounded continually; and the igno- 
rant and deluded masses in Europe are constantly prompted by the agents 
and hirelings of aristocracy to consider the condition of the negro and their 
own to be the same in principle — indeed to look upon themselves as even far 
less oppressed than the negro. They have not the most distant idea that the 
negro is in a perfectly natural condition, while theirs is wholly artificial; nor 
a single glimpse of the eternal truth, that it is a greater crime against nature 
to force the negro to an equality with them, than to make even a class of their 
own race artificially superior to themselves. All the combinations of human 
force are indeed incompetent to affect either in fact; yet the effort to elevate 
the inferior species to an equality with that which God has placed above it, 
would be vastly more criminal than even the artificial superiority of a class of 
the same race. But we repeat, both alike are impossible in reality. No mat- 
ter what the action of Parliaments, or the laws of primogeniture, or ottier 
eflTorts, the artificial superiority ends with the single generation ; and the suc- 
ceeding one again comes into existence with the eternal and inherent "equali- 
ty" that God has stamped upon the race, complete and perfect as ever. So, 
too, should efforts be made to violate nature in respect to different races or 
species — should Virginia pass laws equalizing the planter and his slave, it 
would only be ajiction — should external force be resorted to, to accomplish 
the impossibility — should the whites of Virginia refuse to learn to read, or cul- 
tivate their faculties, and devote themselves wholly to the mental elevation of 
the blacks, all their efforts would end with the present generation, and in the 
succeeding one. Nature, true to herself, would vindicate her laws. The white 
would be again just as siijyerior, and the negro just as inferior, as if the natural 
order and harmony had never been disturbed. No mental equality, short of 
physical equality, could be possible ; nor, indeed, could social suicide, amalga- 
mation itself, realize the abolition idea of equality. To the extent that it oc- 
curred, there would be only extinction of the specific character of both parties; 
while beyond that, the specific character and the eternal "inequality" of the 
races, would remain undisturbed, the integrity of each perfect as ever. 



25 

The continucJ ascondancy of an aristorrary, or ruling class, on the con- 
trary, instead of the laws of nature, rests wiioUy on the ignorance of the 
masses. With the Government, the wealth, all the forces of the State in its 
possession, it cuUivates its own intelligence, anil withholds the means uf 
mental improvement from the people. Thus the same Parliament in England 
which voted forty thousand pounds to educate the people, appropriated eighty 
thousand to repair the queen's stables; making the physical comfort of tlie 
dumb animals of double importance to the moral well-being of the peoplf. 
Thus, too, while plundering the laboring classes of some five millions an- 
nually to pay the interest on money squandered to elevate the Negro to a com- 
mon level with the former, they annually appropriate about a hundred thou- 
sand pounds for education, or allow the people to use about the fiftieth part 
of the former amount to elevate themselves ; or, when robbing a British laborer 
offifly cents to elevate the negro to his own level, permit him to use one cent 
to elevate himself to the level of those with whom God and Nature has made 
him equal. Yet strange indeed this atrocious imposture and unapproachable 
villany passes for "philanthropy ;" and there are even Americans so debauched 
by Britishism, and so stultified in their moral perceptions, as to glorify it as an 
act of humanity, and a great "national effort" in behalf of "liberty.'' Nor 
is this misconception or confusion between artificially degraded classes of a 
superior race, and the natural condition of an inferior one, confined to Europe. 
Throughout the northern States, those with whom British books and British 
writers are standard authorities, universally adopt the same notion. And it 
will always be found that those most in favor of class distinctions in their 
own race, or most in favor of special legislation, or those schemes or con- 
trivances that foster artificial distinctions amongst the whites, are those, too, 
most hostile to what is termed "southern slavery." 

Thus it is, that the false theory of a single race, applied to the social con- 
dition of the South, assumes the presence of facts that only exist in the diseased 
imaginations of those who apply it; and these imaginary facts thus generated 
by the theory become in turn its main support. And while the actual con- 
dition of the negro, which infinitely better than any other portion of his race, 
proves conclusively that that condition is a normal or natural one; the fact that 
he is mentally inferior to the European peasant, which simply proves that he 
belongs to a different race or species, is by a monstrous lie, and so far as the 
welfare of both races is concerned, a deplorable delusion, perverted into proof 
that he is suffering under still greater oppression than the former. Thus, too^ 
with the notion of a common wrong and a common cause, from the very 
necessities of falsehood is also associated the idea or notion of a common 
origin, and a single race. 

Such are the causes, or such the leading causes of popular delusion on this 
subject, and which for half a century or more have been wielded to work out 
more mischief, more evils, indeed, to " perpetrate more outrage on humanity" 
than ever before known in any similar period in the whole history of mankind. 

We can in this place only briefly refer to some of the more prominent con- 
sequences resulting from this delusion, but shall in a subsequent chapter give 
the facts and details that sustain the present assumptions. 

It is estimated that the Brhish government has expended six hundred mil- 
4 



26 

lions to put down the African slave trade, to abolish slavery, or rather, to call 
things by their right names, to destroy the natural relations of the races in the 
"Wost India Islands— in short, under the pretence of benefiting the Negro, to 
lireak down the distinctions of nature, and eqiuilize those whom the Almighty 
has made xiacqxuil. 

This enormous sum is of course laid upon the already over-burdened 
shoulders of the British laboring and producing classes; and, incredible as it 
will appear to posterity, at the very moment that a hundred millions, the pro- 
ceeds of the sweat and toil of the over-worked and often half-famished British 
laborer, was thus squandered on a distant and unknown people, the latter was 
better fed and infinitely less worked than the former. And it is reasonable to 
suppose that for every idle and vagabond Negro now basking in tropical 
suns or revelling in pumpkin in Jamaica, there is a poor worn out, 
maimed and defaced British laborer perishing in the prison almshouses of 
England, a necessary victim of "philanthrophic" imposture, and "humane" 
iniquity. 

There are eight millions in the British islands unable to read ; yet these 
dumb, voiceless beings, instead of using the proceeds of their own, labor to 
educate their own offspring, to save their own children from that most hideous 
of all savageisms, the ignorance of a superior race in the midst of high civili- 
zation, are compelled by a despotic and irresponsible oligarchy to surrender 
the proceeds of their toil to be wasted on a distant, and to them an utterly 
unknown race. 

Within the past ten years several millions of British subjects have perished 
of famine, every one of whom might have been saved if the money squan- 
dered on the Negro had been employed for that purpose; indeed it is reasona- 
ble to suppose that the proceeds of labor wrung alone from the bones and 
sinews of these murdered Irishmen themselves, for the benefit, or the pretended 
benefit of the Negro, would have been sufficient to save every man of them. 

The monstrous imposture which has so long deceived the world under the 
cloak of philanthropy and a pretended desire to benefit humanity, has been 
sustained and kept up by the lying assumption that it was the British nation, 
the totality of the British people who carried on this Negro policy; but it id 
the work alone of the governing class, the oligarchy, the half million or 
.so of the British population embodied in the Parliament, while the unrepre- 
sented millions, the people proper, those whose labor furnishes the means, 
wiio bear the burthens and sufler the sacrifices, have no more to do with it, 
iiidecd are as utterly ignorant of it, as the people of Kamschatka or the 
mliabitants of the moon. 

To suppose such a thing that these eight millions of artificial heathens, 
(-xisling in the heart of British society would give their sweat and toil and 
labor for such purposes, that the poor emaciated artizan, the over-worked and 
•iften half-famished multitudes shut out from the light of earth as well as hea- 
ven, in British mines, would, of their own volition, labor and toil and suffer, 
to enable the Negro to live in idleness in Jamaica— to suppose such a thing 
we repeat, is an atrocious blasphemy, a libel upon the Almighty, who has 
beneficently as wisely ordained to the contrary, and made self-preservation a 
primary instinct of our nature. 



27 

The immediate, practical, inevitable result of this vast expenditure on 
the Negro is to rivet more surely the slavery of the British millions, to comi)el 
every laborer in England to work an hour longer every day of his life, and to 
snatch a portion of the food from the mouths of his children, often earni^d by 
the very life-blood of the father, to be wasted on the Negro. It is the robbery 
and plunder of the disfranchised millions, the ignorant, helpless, starving 
multitudes of British laborers by a heartless and brutal oligarchy to accom- 
plish its own ulterior designs and effect schemes of transcendanl villany under 
the mask and cover of philanthropy. 

It is a mortgage on the bones and muscles, the bodies and souls of future 
generations of their own flesh and blood, under the hypocritical pretence of 
benefiting humanity. 

The actual wrong thus inflicted upon the unrepresented masses of Britain, 
would have been the same if every manumitted Negro had been elevated to 
the standard of a VVilberforce or made the literary equal of old Johnson him- 
self; but the results upon the Negro have been scarcely less disastrous. 
It is now admitted by the tools as well as the dupes of the imposture that 
while the mortality of the slave traffic has advanced from 14 to 25 per cent, 
as the direct result of British interference, not one single Jlfrican the less has 
been imported! 

The world, civilization, the wants of society, the comfort and well-being 
of the millions of Christendom required the products of the tropics and of the 
West India Islands. The Creator has ordained that these products can only 
be forthcoming through the labor of the negro ; — the demand was imperative, 
and the labor was furnished. It is not necessary to enquire whether the 
mode of furnishing this labor was right or wrong, whether the necessities 
of human well-being demanded only its regulation on principles of humanity 
or, whether it was or is inherently and absolutely wrong; British interfer- 
ence with it has only brouglit suffering and death to the, in this connection, 
" unhappy negro." If British chizens, the people of London and Liverpool 
required a certain amount of coffee, sugar, and other tropical products, the 
labor necessary to meet these demands was always furnished. Thus, if the 
labor of fify thousand negroes was required, eighty thousand was shipped 
on the African coast, as thirty thousand of them would be sacrificed by 
British interference. 

What number of negroes have thus, within the last sixty years been de- 
stroyed, actually murdered, in the name of philanthropy may not be known, 
but it must be enormous ; and for every one of these, for all the hideous 
diabliares of the middle passage, for all this human suffering, immeasurable 
and illimitable, the British aristocracy and their tools and dupes in Europe 
and America are justly responsible. In Jamaica, and the other islands, the 
natural relations of the races broken up, the Negro of course refuses to labor, 
and rapidly returning to the African standard of the race, these islands, 
which he in the very bosom of the American Continent, and should be the 
very garden of American civilization, now promise to become the seat and 
centre of an African barbarism. 

Now all these consequences, these results, the mortgaging of the bones 
and muscles of future generations of British laborers, and the indefinit« 



28 

postponement of their own liberation under pretence of liberating the Negro — 
the hypocritical and false issue presented to the credulous friends of liberty 
every where — the evils worked out on the Negro himself— the destructioa 
of life and increased sufferings of the middle passage — the rapidly approach- 
ing savageism of those forced from their normal condition in Jamaica and 
other West India Islands — the false hopes, mistaken notions, and prospec- 
tive extinction of the Negro populations at the North — the overthrow of 
civilization, and threatened establishment of an African barbarism on our 
Southern border, the ally and instrument of European aristocracy in any 
future collision with American Democracy — above all the effects upon our- 
selves — the wide spread delusion that Southern institutions are an "evil" 
and their extension dangerous — the notion so prevalent at the North, that there 
is a real antagonism, or that the system of the South is hostile to Northern 
interests— the weakened union sentiment, and the utter debauchmenf, the abso- 
lute traitorism of a portion of the Northern people, not only to the Union, but 
to Democratic institutions, and the cause of civilization on this Continent — all 
these, with the minor and almost innumerable mischiefs that this vast delu- 
sion, this mighty world wide imposture has engendered, or drags in its 
train, rests upon the dogma, the single assumption, the sole elementary foun- 
dation-falsehood, that the Negro is a black white man, or that two widely 
separated, unmistakenly marked, and perpetually different things are the 
SAME thing! ! This single fallacy, which is in reality an absurdity, as well as 
a lie, once exploded, and the mighty edifice which fraud and imposture, and 
popular credulity, have united to magnify into such fearful proportions, 
instantly collapses and disappears forever. The Negro once comprehended, 
as he is, as God has made him, as he must perpetually remain, and instantly, 
" philanthropy," '• humanity," that which men have worshipped as a 
divinity, becomes like the unveiled prophet of Khorasson — a hideous 
monstrosity. 

Fortunately for the cause of truth and real " humanity," this question is 
resolvable into fact and wholly unlike the " divinity" of kings, or " infallibil- 
ity" of priests, or other lying abstractions, which could only be exploded by 
appeals to reason, the absolute falsity and utter absurdity of the single race 
dogma is demonstrable to the senses. 

2'lie human creation like the animal creation, like all the families or forms of 
being, is composed of a certain number nf races, all generally resembling each 
other, rjet each specijically diJJ'crcnt from all others. 

This simple, though mighty truth, hitherto obscured by ignorance and cov- 
ered by a monstrous falsehood, underlies all our sectional troubles and needs 
only to be recognized by our people to end them forever. 

The Negro is a man, but an inferior species of man, Avho could no more 
originate from the same parentage with us than could the owl from the eagle, 
or the shad from the salmon, or the cat from the tiger, and can no more be 
forced by human power, to manifest the fjualitics or fulfil the duties imposed 
by the Almighty on the Caycasian man than can either of these forms of 
life be forced to manifest quahties other than those eternally impressed upon 
them by the hand of God. 

The Caucasian brain measures 92 cubic inches— with the cerebrum, the 



29 

centre of the intellectual functions, relatively predominating over tlie cerebel- 
lum, the centre of the animal instincts; thus, it is capable of indefinite pro- 
gression, and transmits the knowledge or experience acquired by one genera- 
tion to subsequent generations — the record of which is history. 

The Negro brain measures from G5 to 75 cubic inches — with the cerebellum, 
the centre of the animal instincts relatively predominating over the cerebrum, 
the centre of the intellectual powers; thus, its acquisition of knowledge is 
limited to a single generation, and incapable of transmitting this to subsequent 
ones, it can have no histonj. A single glance at eternal and immutable /oc<s, 
which perpetually separate these forms of human existence will be sufficient to 
cover the whole ground— thus, could the deluded people who propose to im- 
prove on the works of the Creator, and dcvatc the Negro to the standard ot the 
white, actually perform an act of omnipotence, and, add 20 or 30 per cent, 
to the totality of the Negro brain, they would still be at as great a distance as 
ever from their final object, while the relations of the anterior and posterior 
portions of the brain remained as at present. 

And were they capable of performing a second act of creative power, to 
diminish the posterior portion, and add to the anterior portion of the Negro 
brain, to make it in form, as well as size, correspond to that of the Caucasian 
man, they would even then, after all this effort, and all this display of omni- 
potent force, come back again to the starting point, for such a brain could no 
more be born of a negress, than an elephant pass the eye of a needle. 
Historical fact is in perfect accordance with these physiological facts; thus, 
while there are portions, nationalities or branches of the Caucasian race 
that have relapsed, become effete, decayed, lost — the race has steadily pro- 
gressed, and from the banks of the Nile, to those of the Mississippi, civiliza- 
tion, progress, intellectual development, the specific characteristics of the Cau- 
casian have alone changed locations. The Negro on the contrary is at this 
moment just where the race was three thousand years ago, when sculptured 
on Egyptian monuments. Portions of it in contact with the superior race 
have been temporarily advanced; but invariably, without exception, they have 
returned to the African standard as soon as this contact has ceased, or as 
soon as the results of amalgamation between them have disappeared. 

The Abyssinians originally pure Caucasian, the Lybians, the Numidians 
of Roman history, and Ethiopeans, the two latter, and doubtless the Lybians 
also of mixed Caucasian blood are often confounded with the Negro or the 
typical woolly haired, and thus it has been claimed that the latter were capa- 
ble of progress; but it is a historical truth beyond contradiction or doubt even 
that the typical African, the race now in our inidst, has never of its own voli- 
tion passed beyond the hunter condition, that condition which it now occu- 
pies in Africa, when isolated from all other races. 

The Creator has beneficently as wisely permitted amalgamation to a certain 
extent between the extremes of "humanity," the Caucasian and Negro — other- 
wise there would be slavery, oppression, brutality, death, but this is limited 
within fixed boundaries; thus, the Mulatto or Hybrid of the fourth generation, 
is as sterile as the mule or most animal hybrids are in the first generation. 

These two races thus widely diverging, one the most superior and the other 
the most inferior of all the human races, exist at the South in juxtaposition- 



30 

Wlial does fact, reason, common sense, the evident design of the Almighty as 
written upon the structure of each indicate as their true social relations'? 

Why manifestly those peculiar institutions which actually do exist. The 
superior and predominating race adopt for themselves a system of Democracy — 
that is those that are equal by nature are declared equal by the law — those 
organized alike and endowed alike, and thus, evidently designed by the Crea- 
tor for like purposes, for the exercise of the same rights and performance of 
the same duties, are protected in these rights and compelled to perform these 
duties. For the inferior race inferiorly organized and inferiorly endowed, as 
incapable of fulfilling the purposes assigned to the superior organization by 
the Almighty Creator of all as it is to change the color of its skin a. peculiar 
system adapted to its specific nature, and which provides for that eternal subor- 
dination to the Caucasian man, fixed from the beginning, is not merely a ne- 
cessity of human existence but an imperative duly devolving on the superior 
race. 

This system, these peculiar institutions, ignorance, popular credulity and 
the followers of European opinion confound with Roman and other systems 
oi' slavery, to which it has just as complete a resemblance as black has to whitej 
but this term unfortunately fixed upon it, has deceived millions of men — thus 
we see multitudes among ourselves impotently as blindly butting their brains 
against a present, normal, vital, organization of Southern society with the con- 
fident belief that they are battling with monstrosities dead and buried 
centuries ago! To be sure it does not necessarily follow because the 
white is superior and the Negro inferior, that therefore the present relations of 
the races or the social system of the South is exactly right or in precise con- 
formity to the wants or the natural rights of both; but it is a fact, that this 
condition assures to the Negro a greater amount of happiness than any other 
ever known; therefore for precisely the reasons that New York claims her 
institutions to be founded in truth, may Mississippi do the same; and if the 
"greatest good to the greatest number" proves that "equality" is a natural re- 
lation where white men exist only, a similar result wherever whites and 
Negroes exist together, equally proves that the relation of master and "slave" 
is a fundamental law of human existence. 

The Negroes at the South are even acknowledged by the dupes of delu- 
sion to be in a good material condition, which in truth is acknowledging every 
thing, for it is true in all cases with whites as well as blacks that those in 
the best physical condition are also in the best moral condition. 

Material and moral well being is an inseparable unity, that cannot be divided 
or isolated any more than can mind and body, or life and organized matter; 
therefore the Negro in Mississippi who has plenty to eat, who is not over- 
worked, who rapidly multiplies, is also from the necesshy of things in the 
best moral condition possible for lain. 

Those writers among us who sometimes undertake to defend Southern 
institutions by comparing the condition of the Negro with the condition of 
the British laborer, and who think they have made out their case when they 
shew it to be no worse than the latter, thus make a vital mistake. The fact is 
no comparison is allowable or possible. The Negro is governed by those 
naturally superior, and is in the hcsl condition of any portion or branch of his 



31 

race; while the British laborer, governed by those naturally his equals, and even 
sometimes his inferiors, is in the worst condition of any portion or branch of 
his race. The first is secure in all the rights that nature gives iiim; the latter 
is praclically denied all or nearly all of his; — the first is protected and pro- 
vided for by those the Creator has designed should govern him ; the latter is 
kept in ignorance, brutalized, over-worked and plundered by those it is 
designed should only govern themselves; — one is a normal condition, llie other an 
infamous usurpation. 

The notion that so-called slavery is an "evil" is equally a fallacy as that 
which supposes it a wrong. It arises to a great extent from confounding two 
very different things — the presence of a Negro population with the peculiar'^ 
institutions necessary for its governance; thus, while it might be desirable in 
certain localities to get rid of the former, to destroy the latter would be as 
absurd and indeed as wrong as it would be to tear all the boys of a certain 
age from their parents and guardians and to turn them loose upon the world. 

Instead of an "evil" in any sense whatever it is an unmixed good to the 
Negro, to the master, to the North, to civilization, to the world; it is "the best^/ 
relation between capital and labor ever known," the "corner stone of our Re- 
publican edifice," and the presence of the inferior race on this continent, the 
most fortunate conjuncture that has ever happened in human aflfairs. 

It has called into being a class of men, who for abihty, for accomplished 
statesmanship, for all the higher and nobler quahties of true manhood, are 
unequalled either now or at any time in history. 

These men, these so-called "slaveholders," are the originators of Demo- 
cratic institutions on this continent, the founders of our Republican system, 
and its main and always reliable defenders ever since, who as a class have 
done more to advance freedom, progress, true ideas of Government, and 
therefore true civilization, than all other men together, that have ever lived 
upon the earth. From Washington to Polk, all our foreign wars or national 
defences, all our annexations of territory, the extension of our system, the 
expansion of Democratic ideas, all the ameliorations of the condition of the 
laboring classes, in short, with one single exception,* every thing great or ben- 
eficent in our national history is the work of American " slaveholders." 

And it is just as true that every thing tending to corrupt our system, to de- 
bauch the Democratic sentiment of the nation, to check its progress, and force 
it back into the adoption of the slavish maxims of Europe ; indeed, every 
thing hostile to the interests of the masses, and at war with the well being and 
manhood of the laboring man, has either originated with or been advocated by 
the so-called "friends of liberty," the anti-slavery statesmen of the North. 

The public lives of two eminent men fairly illustrate this truth. 

Jackson, the slaveholder, devoted his whole life to the service of the labor- 
ing classes, and struck down "Britishism" wherever he found it, whether in 
the battle field or the still more dangerous arena of legislation, while 
Adams, the abolitionist, the exponent of "anti-slavery," spent the best years 
of his life in propagating and defending the most abject and debasing maxims 
of "Britishism." 

* Mr. Van Buren's Independent Treasury measure. 



32 

Three-fourths of the voles in Congress against National Banks and other 
contrivances for defrauding labor, have been those of slaveholders ; all the vetoes 
striking down these schemes when worked through Congress have been those 
of slaveholding Presidents; every additional foot of slave territory has been an 
increased weight in the scale on the side of labor against capital — the annex- 
ation of Texas and the votes of her slaveholdmg Senators alone broke down 
the unjust tariff of 1842, and gave to the farmers of the North and West 
the beneficent free trade tariff of 184G — in short, every page and line in our 
national history, bears witness to the truth of the declaration already made, that 
tiie presence of the inferior race, (which originating the peculiar iiistUutions of 
the South, has called this class of men into being) is indeed the most fortunate 
conjuncture of circumstances that has ever happened in human affairs. 

And in view of these historical facts and our present condition, and that of the 
down trodden millions of Europe, (the victims of the infamous systems or con- 
trivances that enable the few to plunder and degrade the many) it is equally 
true that the abolition of "Negro Slavery," aside from all other consequences 
and viewed only as annihilating or striking this class of men out of exis- 
tence, these "slaveholders" these Jeffersons, Jacksons, Calhouns and McDuf- 
fies of the South, would itself be the greatest misfortune that could happea 
to mankind. 

For this purpose, and the accomplishment of this end, British aristocracy 
and European monarchists, their tools and instruments all over, everywhere, 
openly or covertly labor incessantly. 

They know instinctively the danger and the men, the ideas and the repre- 
sentative of ideas, that threaten to destroy their own vile "systems" of 
oppression; and from the day that the brutal old tory. Dr. Johnson, declared 
that "the Negro drivers of America were the loudest yelpers after liberty" to 
the present moment, all their efforts have been directed to break down a system 
in deadly hostility to their own — to crush ideas destined to revolutionize 
Europe — to destroy a class, the founders and true defenders of Democratic 
institutions. 

But delusion and imposture have most probably reached their limits. The 
monstrous fraud, indeed the impiety of the British aristocracy, who pretend- 
ing to benefit, labor to deface " humanity," to force an inferior race to a level 
with their own flesh and blood, and lo blot out the distinctions of the Almighty, 
that they may preserve those of their own invention— will be understood. 

The mask that has so long concealed the hideous features of their pretended 
"philanlhrophy," is destined ere long to be.'torn aside forever; and all men, even 
the beniglued and besotted beings in uur midst, who have so faithfully labored 
to propagate its lies and to spread its delusions, will yet unite in denouncing it — 
as the mightiest imposture that has ever darkened the understanding or per- 
verted the moral instincts of mankind. 



54 W 
^ 



Extract from a letter to tlie Author from Br. Cartwright ofjY. 0. 

" The defence of Negro slavery has ever heen on some untenable basis, by every 
writer and speaker who has attempted to advocate it ; most of whom have done 
more harm than good to the cause. Some few, as Calhoun and others, based their 
argumentsonsolidmaterials, but they did not collect enough to form a firm foundation 
for the whole superstructure of our Southern Institutions. In theory, at least, 
there w^as some discrepancy ; and persons abroad could not understand the reason for 
the facts, and therefore discredited them, just as Herodotus did the story of the 
sailors, who coasted along Africa until their shadows at noon pointed to the South, 
instead of the North. For nearly two thousand years the facts reported by the 
sailors were disbelieved, just as all the material facts in regard to Negro slavery, 
that it is no slavery, but a natural relation of the races, are at the present day dis- 
believed by all those who are unacquainted with the Negro nature by actual obser- 
vation. The disbelief, in both cases, was for the want of a theory, a correct theory, 
to show the reasonableness, or rather the necessity of the phenomena. What the 
theory, based upon subsequent discoveries in geography and astronomy, has done 
to legitimate the facts of the ancient sailors, who told that they had visited a coun- 
try so far South that their shadows pointed to the contrary way from shadows in 
the North, the first Chapter of your Work has done for all those seemingly contra- 
dictory and incomprehensible facts in regard to Negroes and Negro slavery. It 
not only proves their truth beyond a doubt, but proves that they could not be other- 
wise ; that they are true from necessity, as clearly as we now know it must from 
necessity be true, that the shadows beyond the equator point South at noon-day." 



Letter from Hon. J. Wojford Tucker, of the Legislature of South 
Carolina^ to Hon. J. L. Orr, of U. S. House of Representatives, 

Spartansburg, S. C, Jan'y2Q, 1854. 

Hon. J. L. Orr: 

My Dear CoZ.— Please send me the numbers of Dr. Van Evrie's work on "Negro 
Slavery," including the first number which I have read, at any expense demanded 
by the circumstances. 

It is the ablest, the profoundest, the most original production of the age. It is 
destined, I predict, to have a greater effect upon the opinion of Europe and America, 
and to do more in revolutionizing moral sentiment and correcting existing errors 
and mischievous delusions, than any work of the 19th century. 

With high regard, I am youi-s, very truly, &c. 

J. WOFFORD TUCKEP. 



From Hon. T. L. Clingman, U. S. House of Representatives. 

House Representatives, Dec. ISth, 1S53. 
^f"r Sir,— I liave read with much interest your chapter on " Negroes and Negro 
Slavery." Its propositions are strikingly and powerfully stated. Your blo\vs a<-ainst 
a popular delusion are given with dexterity, rapidity, and the force of a sledge^hain- 
luer. While reading your pages I regretted the action of the Senate on the census 
bill of ISaO. The e.xecutive board, at my instance, but with much hesitation and 
aner many objections, included a series of questions directed so as to ascertain not 
only the numbers and ages of the mulattoes, a mixed blooded people, but also the 
number, &c., in each degree of removal from the pure races up to four degrees, and 
also the number of children in each family of each class. When the tables were 
presented to the Senate for adoption, these classes of questions were stricken out 
partly because some of the Senators considered the information useless, and others 
expressed apprehension in debate, that it might if obtained tend to overthrow the 
common idea of the unity of the races. Had the views contained in your pamphlet 
been presented to those Senators, could such have been the action of that body? 
The information collected in such a manner, from a wide field, would most probably 
have decided the question as to the specific difference, or identity, of the Cauca^iar 
and Negro races. Notwithstanding the difficulties in the way of a single person's 
obtaining facts enough from private sources, your success is remarkable, and most 
of your propositions are of such a character, as when presented, to command assent, 
because every one's observations afford more or less evidence in their favor. A wide 
circulation of your pamphlet will be equally serviceable to the Northern and Southern 
sections of the Union, Respectfully yours, &.c. 

Dh. J. H. Va.V EvriE. T. L. CuNGMAff. 







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